2023-2024 Welcome from Dr. Snavely

Dr. John Snavely

Dr. John Snavely, Music Director/Conductor

To our fabulous patrons and friends of the Green Valley Concert Band Inc. from Musical Director and Conductor, John Snavely

2023-’24 Green Valley Concert Band Season

To our valued, supportive and faithful audience members: We are thrilled at the prospect of performing our new concert season for your enjoyment and entertainment! We take pride in providing quality performances with a wide variety of musical styles chosen to enthrall and delight. Our concert music is prepared with diligence and care. We strive to share our love of excellent music with you, our esteemed and appreciated GVCB community.  Our season ends with a performance of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue with guest artist Eileen Prager Perry Schwartz. 2024 is the 100th anniversary of Gershwin’s Rhapsody! Eileen, our soloist grew up in New York City where her father played trumpet in the New York Philharmonic. Leonard Bernstein noticed Eileen’s talent became her mentor. Eileen’s mother was in a group of friends with Gershwin’s grandmother. Eileen plays the most authentic and brilliant Rhapsody you will ever hear, a performance not to miss!

Your ticket purchases and donations allow us to perform outstanding concerts as well as purchase new music, necessary instruments and showcase guest artists. An important part of our mission is to assist area school band programs, students and their teachers with additional funds and instruments for their programs as well as scholarships for summer music camp for deserving students. Concert Themes and musical highlights of our new season follow:

Spookily Spectacular Halloween Themed Music (and other favorites)

10/19 and 10/20 2023 at CPAC, Green Valley, 4:30 p.m. and Canoa Ranch 10/22, 5 p.m.

 

You won’t want to miss out on our performances of a wide variety of concert favorites and Halloween themed music. Selections include:

 

            Phantom Of The Opera: Introduction and Scream!                  Andrew Lloyd Weber

            An Outdoor Overture                                                                   Aaron Copland

            March To The Scaffold                                                                 Hector Berlioz arr. Rogers

            Broadway Showstoppers                                                            arr. Warren Barker

            Danse Macabre                                                                            Camille Saint Saens

            Pirates Of The Caribbean                                                            Hans Zimmer arr. Wasson

            A Rockin’ Halloween                                                                    Michael Story

 

Season’s Greetings!

12/10/23, Sahuarita District Auditorium, 3 p.m. Doors open at 2:20

Music for jump starting and enhancing your holiday spirit!

 

            Holiday Portraits                                                                           Sean O’Laughlin

            Concerto in Bb, Movement 1                                                       G. F. Handel arr. for harp and band

            ***Guest Artist: Danielle Swarz, harp***

            Evening Snow at Kambara                                                           Julie Giroux

            Chirstmas Intrada                                                                         Alfred Reed

            C’est Noel                                                                                      Andre Jutrus

            Christmas On Broadway                                                              arr. John Higgins

            ***Featuring twelve members of the Green Valley Community Chorus***

            Fantaisia on a 13th Century Carol                                               James Hosay

            A Rollicking Hanukkah                                                                 Randall Standridge

            A Canadian Brass Christmas                                                       Henderson and Cable

            In The Christmas Mood              (Big Band Style)                         John Wasson

            Sleigh Ride                                                                                    Leroy Anderson

 

Exotic Sounds From Far Away

1/21/23, Sahuarita District Auditorium, 3 p.m.

 

Tour the world with us! This concert features a brand new work commissioned by the GVCB Inc. composed by Mark Wolfram. As always, our musical selections are chosen for their quality, variety, and high level of musical interest. 1st trombonist and composer extraordinaire James Parcel arranged the brilliant Espana by Chabrier for our band, the 2nd premiere for this concert!

 

            World Premier of a commissioned work for GVCB                  Mark Wolfram

            Molly On The Shore                                                                     Percy Grainger

            Bookmarks From Japan                                                             Julie Giroux

            Persis Overture                                                                           James Hosay

            Mount Fuji and Kinrhuzan

            Finlandia (chorale)                                                                        Jean Sibelius

            Valdrez March                                                                             Johannes Hanssen

            Espana                                                                                         Chabrier arr. James Parcel

            Africa: Ceremony, Ritual and Dance                                         Robert Smith

            Big Band Spectacular                                                                 John Higgens

 

Dance The Night Away

3/3/24, Sahuarita District Auditorium, 3 p.m.

 

I’ll bet you won’t keep your feet still at this concert! Music and dance are so closely related and grew up side by side. I promise you will leave the auditorium feeling renewed and full of joy.

 

            Cloud Dancing                                                                           Richard Saucedo

            Havanna Nights                                                                         Randall Standridge

            Border Dance                                                                            Jack Stamp

            Libertango                                                                                 Astor Piazolla

            ***Guest Tango Artists***

            Suite Of Old American Dances (selected movements)             Robert Russell Bennett

            New World Symphony (theme)                                                 Antonin Dvorak

            Four Scottish Dances (selected movements)                           Malcolm Arnold

            Tribute To Elvis                                                                         James Christensen

            Dance The Night Away                                                            David Rudloff

A Walk On The Wild Side!

Sahuarita District Auditorium, 4/14/24

 

Featuring Guest Pianist Eileen Prager Perry Schwartz performing Rhpasody In Blue.  Music has been said to have the capability of calming the savage beast. In this concert we will strive to excite your passions and ignite wild visions and dreams!  We will serve up a most interesting variety of unusually wonderful musical selections.

 

            Where Lark And Eagle Never Flew                                         James Curnow

            Incantation and Dance                                                            John Barnes Chance

            House Of The Rising Sun                                                        arr. Bill Holcolmbe

            The Ringmaster March                                                            John Mackay

            Quiet City                                                                                  Aaron Copland

            Rhapsody In Blue                                                                     George Gershwin

            Eileen Prager Perry Schwartz, piano soloist

            Stars and Stripes Forever                                                       J.P. Sousa

Sincerely,

John Snavely

 

Biography

John Snavely, affectionately know as “Dr. John,” earned his doctorate in music at the University of Arizona. He began his conducting career when he founded the Evening Wind Symphony in the mid-1990's at Pima Community College in Tucson. Now the ensemble is Sonora Winds and John is director emeritus after twenty years of his leadership. In the mid 2000's GVCB board members came to a Sonora Winds concert, saw him conduct Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, and hired him to be their musical director. As a high school senior, John won an audition and performed with the American Youth Performs Orchestra in Carnegie Hall under the baton of Carmen Dragon. He performed all summer in 1971 with the first Disneyland All American College Band. John is a member of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra where he won an audition to play clarinet and bass clarinet in 1969, his first year at the University of Arizona. He has also performed with the Phoenix Symphony and Flagstaff Summer Festival orchestra and was principal clarinetist with the Tucson Pops Orchestra. His doctoral lecture recital, Benny Goodman's Commissioning Of Clarinet Concertos, was performed for the International Clarinet Society's Clarfest in the summer of 1991, and then again for the British Society of Clarinetists and Saxophonists in Ripon, England during their 1993 summer meeting. John toured Arizona, Mexico and Puerto Rico as an artist roster member of the Arizona Commission On The Arts with the Sonora Quartet (saxophones) and his own ensemble Concertissimo. He performed for a decade with the Arizona Musicfest in Carefree, Arizona and performed Ibert's Concertino as alto saxophone soloist with the orchestra. His career includes woodwind, music education and music history teaching at Pima College, University Of Arizona, and Black Hills State University. He was program director and instructor of the Tucson Symphony's Young Composer Project for seven years in the early 1990's enabling middle and high school students to compose works and hear them played by the Tucson Symphony Chamber Orchestra. John assisted in founding Opening Minds Through The Arts for the Tucson Unified School district and co-authored a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education, funding the program for it's first three years. His current teaching position is as an Arts Integration Specialist at Howell Elementary. John for thirty years was director of childrens' and youth music at St. Mark's Presbyterian Church in Tucson.  He resides in Green Valley with his wife Carol West.